The
US administration may be crowing publicly over their spectacularly botched
raid on the lair of 'Saddam's lion cubs', Uday and Qusay Hussein during
'Operation Kill'em, Shoot'em and then Shoot 'em up Real Good all over
again.' The release last week of the gruesome footage displaying the
bloated and stitched up remains of the deposed Iraqi leader's unpopular sons
has made it obvious that the Pentagon's victory yodels still ring as hollow
as the collective cranial voids that hatched this atrocity in the first
place.

Uday and
Qusay's bullet-riddled corpses - the crown jewels of the carnage - were
meant to serve as powerful symbols of the US's humanitarian aims in bringing
about democracy to Iraq. Instead, the images seem to be reflecting the
Dorian Grey truth behind the group portrait of team George W.

In typical
Marvel comic fashion, the neo-con hawks went for the big KABOOM overkill -
laying waste not only to Uday and Qusay Hussein but the administration's
unravelling-by-the-second justification for the latest invasion of Iraq. In
case you don't remember, this was all about weapons of mass-you-know-what;
the very things that were meant to bring about Armageddon in the time that
it takes Tony to satisfy, or at least, impregnate Cheri Blair. If anyone
knew anything about the inner workings of Pere Hussein's cavernous sanctum,
it would have been the fanged and whiskery offspring of the Baghdad Lion
King himself. Afterall, who else would have had the master keys to the
Hussein clan's liquor cabinet, not to mention the invisible ink drawn maps
leading to all those bio-weapons labs?

The
dwindling number of Americans who actually believe that these deadly
programs really do exist must be scratching their heads by now over the
Bushi'ites latest act of self-immolation. It would seem that the appointed
president has cut off his proverbial penis to spite his proverbial testicles
- a shame, really when you think about how primed and buff they looked just
weeks ago bulging out of his flight suit. Still, it doesn't take a dickless
wonder to connect the dots and reveal the tortured logic behind the
military's latest bungling.

The
neo-con hawks who perch on the shoulders of puppet Generals have splattered
their poop all over the war plans in a desperate bid to conceal their part
in financing and generally supporting the regime of their former employee,
Saddam Hussein. What else could explain the 200 soldiers of the 101st
Airborne Division blasting their way into the house where Uday and Qusay H.
were holed up (with presumably only a bottle of scotch and a Penthouse
centrefold for company) and the orders that were given to silence the pair
with bullets? Surely, there must have been a more cost effective and less
collaterally damaging way of making these two cough up the missing yellow
cake.

The
Bushi'ites, contrary to the village idiot visage of their leader are
extremely well-versed in the tactics of promoting illiteracy to educate the
public. Since the start of his reign, George the Second has relied on the
power of visual language to convey his agenda in the stark terms of black
and white, good vs. evil as if his policies were divined from 'Power
Rangers' reruns on the Cartoon Network.

First it
was the statue - the bronzed look-a-like of Saddam Hussein pledging his
allegiance to his former bosses and the endlessly looped footage of the 24
hour topple-ganza that followed as the ousted leader's likeness was given
the heave-ho off its pedestal. After doing their own number crunching,
Rupert Murdoch's rivals came to this conclusion: Americans prefer the Tom
and Jerry-esque hijinks of clear cut villains and heroes to the more sedate
format of word driven analysis. They also seem to have an undiminished
appetite for the sight of rented Kurdish dancers waving their shoes around.
The simplistic narratives laid out by this administration continue to be
whittled down to porno-flick standards of plotline by the media outlets who
are undoubtedly delighted by soundbites they can package to look like the
trailers for a 'Daredevil' sequel.

Saving
Private Jessica the Vampire Slayer from the humanitarian aid of her Iraqi
doctors was the next phase of Operation Create a Hollywood Blockbuster from
a Botched and Bungled Military Exercise of Monumental Inconsequence. The
visuals, unfortunately were sorely lacking to back up the military's claims
that they had performed a feat of unrivalled heroism by storming a hospital
ward where the friendly staff were waiting to hand over their patient.
Still, the West Virginian native was awarded the Bronze Medal and the
dubious celebrity stature of someone who will one day be flogging handbags
of her own design in an infomercial.

Surprisingly few people have raised an eyebrow over the latest Bush led
government's claims to have the dirty polaroid proof of the Hussein
brothers’ bacchanals, which according to the latest reports, had them
feeding their enemies, 'Gladiator' style to caged and snack-deprived lions.
Notice how the debauchery mercury always shoots up into the stratosphere
whenever public support of the US's kill-'em-first-and-ask-questions-later
policies show signs of flagging. This is not to say that the dim-bulb duo
are undeserving of their fate as fertilizer. One look at their art
collection was enough to know that their crimes against interior decorating
were legendary.

A surplus
of cynicism is perhaps justified here; especially if you consider the
fictitiously tiny victims of Saddam Hussein's rampaging armies in Kuwait 12
years ago. While Uday and Qusay's impaled heads are making the rounds of
Baghdad via closed circuit television, those tube-feeding Kuwaiti
babies-in-a-bubble keep rearing their non-existent and ugly little heads.

In 1991,
Incubator Babies (IB's) were like WMD's - a reductive term used to describe
things that don't even exist. It might be necessary to go back and dust the
cobwebs off Bush One's lexicon of Lies: 'Flagrantly Filthy Fibbing Factoids
- Volume One' to refresh one's memory of the most blood-chilling chapter of
the first Gulf War. I'm talking, of course about the one that never even
took place.

Public
outrage over Incubator Babies went into full throttle in the months leading
up to the first Gulf War after a Kuwaiti nurse identified only as 'Nayirah'
appeared before a congressional committee on October 10th, 1990 claiming to
have seen the helpless creatures torn from their tubings and tossed out of
their incubators during a looting rampage by Iraqi soldiers. Fewer still
seem to remember the disclaimer imbedded in the fine print some years later
when it was revealed that the 'nurse' was in fact the daughter of the
Kuwaiti ambassador to the United States who had agreed to take on the weepy
role of the heroine. Needless to say, the budding star had never even
stepped foot inside the hospital where this was all meant to have taken
place.

The
Kuwaiti government-in-exile, in cahoots with the US administration, had
enlisted the well-connected and funded PR firm Hill & Knowlton to launch a
$10.7 million PR blitz aimed at rousing something more than the tepid
response Americans were giving to the Kuwait crisis before Congress finally
authorized the use of force on January 29th. Of course, it was merely a
coincidence that the President of Hill & Knowlton was none other than the
senior Bush's chief of staff when he was Ronald Reagan's vice-president.

No one
could argue against infants, the Masterminds reasoned correctly and thus the
plot to hatch Incubator Babies went into motion, triggering the predictable
outbursts of rage and indignation against Iraq's latest breech of human
decency. Up until then, the sufferings of Kuwaitis had failed to stir much
public sympathy. American taxpayers were justifiably skeptical about a
country founded on the opulently non-Democratic principles of a Dynasty
suddenly needing their money to bail them out of a crisis. It seemed an
awful lot to fork over just so a few indolent tyrants could maintain their
Gulfstreams and Golf courses.

Incubator
Babies seized the headlines and airwaves, thanks to Hill & Knowlton's
skillful manipulations which included the coached testimony of false
witnesses before the UN. The US went on to make their case for war before
the Security Council with the visual aid of an H&K produced video featuring
more damning evidence of Iraqi atrocites. Then, as now, journalists,
anxious to seize upon something they could 'sex up' into a front-page
feature, ran with it, not even bothering to substantiate any of these claims
on their own. Now, as then, the media is only too willing to dispense with
the grunt work of raising an eyebrow, opting instead for the less-labor
intensive option of taking dictation.

For Gulf
War Two - The Sequel, the junior-league Bushi'ites have Viagra-tized yet
another flagging Imperial campaign with even cruder voodoo props than the
previous George-led administration. The shrunken to fit heads of Uday and
Qusay on closed circuit television is just the latest installment in a
series of hack and paste story boards embellished with blood and chicken
feathers; by-products of the violently puritanical impulses of America's
ruling elite.

This time
the Bushi'ites have pulled out all the stops to construct a narrative that
plays on the naive yearnings of the soft and fleshy bums that settle
themselves into Cineplex seats waiting for the celluloid-based steroids to
kick in. It's become clear that this is what the present administration is
doing by featuring bit players like Uday and Qusay in this latest snuff
flick shot on location in Iraq. In the post 9/11 landscape, incubator
babies draw less box office. They've become relics of a 'kinder and
gentler' Imperialism - one that sought to starve the Iraqi people slowly
through sanctions rather than waste them wholesale.

As the
latest narrative unravels, it's become clear that the Bushi'ites have again
cannibalized their own inner demons for what could be best described at this
stage of the game as Arabian Boogie Nights: The Final Showdown. This is
where the mustachioed villain, sire of the sinister siblings, takes refuge
in a cave and unleashes his weapons of mass destruction - hypnotic gamma
rays that turn the population into guerilla fighters resisting their
liberators' noble mission to transform their camels into cigarettes and
their mosques into shopping malls.

Most
Americans may not even object to the Whitehouse hogging Primetime with their
own version of 'The Bachelor(s)'. Television is, after all, the dumping
ground for all our testosterone driven fears of sexually tainted
'otherness'; the repository of our primordial fascination with the
ritualized violence of a spectacle.

Still, the
question remains of why
dead American soldiers have been left out of this war's latest sideshow
attraction. After all, they too, live fast, die young and don't leave
behind particularly good-looking corpses. Would the flag wavers continue
cheering on the slaughter if the atrocity exhibits on display included some
kid from North Carolina? Probably not, which I guess is entirely the point
the Pentagon is making by stepping up their efforts to divert public
interest away from mounting American casualties.

It's
probably safe to assume that US military personnel would rather see Donald
Rumsfeld's head on a stick making the rounds of Baghdad over anything FOX or
CNN are offering up at the moment. I wonder if anyone has told them yet,
that all those weapons-of-mass-whatever were manufactured in Santa's
Washington Workshop. Or that the 'intelligence' linking Iraq to al-Qaeda was
yet another urban legend. And knowing now how they've been hoodwinked into
serving an indefinite term of hard labour in the blistering desert heat, you
can imagine they'd be savoring the phantom flavor of a 'Rummy Raisin'
popsicle right about now. That would certainly go down quite nicely for the
rest of us, too after feasting our eyes on this blood soaked banquet slab.

Leilla Matsui
is a freelance writer living in Tokyo, Japan. She can be reached at:
catcat@s3.ocv.ne.jp